when he had encountered young men of his station, as capable and as strong as he, who had escaped the service of the army.  For him these men did not exist.  They were less than nothing.  They had waxed fat on lucrative jobs; they had basked in the presence of girls whose brothers and lovers were in the trenches or on the turbulent sea, exposed to the ceaseless dread and almost ceaseless toil of war.  If Glenn’s spirit had lifted him to endurance of war for the sake of others, how then could it fail him in a precious duty of fidelity to himself?  Carley could see him day by day toiling in his lonely canyon—­ plodding to his lonely cabin.  He had been playing the game—­fighting it out alone as surely he knew his brothers of like misfortune were fighting.

So Glenn Kilbourne loomed heroically in Carley’s transfigured sight.  He was one of Carley’s battle-scarred warriors.  Out of his travail he had climbed on stepping-stones of his dead self.  Resurgam!  That had been his unquenchable cry.  Who had heard it?  Only the solitude of his lonely canyon, only the waiting, dreaming, watching walls, only the silent midnight shadows, only the white, blinking, passionless stars, only the wild creatures of his haunts, only the moaning wind in the pines—­only these had been with him in his agony.  How near were these things to God?

Carley’s heart seemed full to bursting.  Not another single moment could her mounting love abide in a heart that held a double purpose.  How bitter the assurance that she had not come West to help him!  It was self, self, all self that had actuated her.  Unworthy indeed was she of the love of this man.  Only a lifetime of devotion to him could acquit her in the eyes of her better self.  Sweetly and madly raced the thrill and tumult of her blood.  There must be only one outcome to her romance.  Yet the next instant there came a dull throbbing—­an oppression which was pain—­an impondering vague thought of catastrophe.  Only the fearfulness of love perhaps!

She saw him complete his task and wipe his brown moist face and stride toward her, coming nearer, tall and erect with something added to his soldierly bearing, with a light in his eyes she could no longer bear.

The moment for which she had waited more than two months had come at last.

“Glenn—­when will you go back East?” she asked, tensely and low.

The instant the words were spent upon her lips she realized that he had always been waiting and prepared for this question that had been so terrible for her to ask.

“Carley,” he replied gently, though his voice rang, “I am never going back East.”

An inward quivering hindered her articulation.

“Never?” she whispered.

“Never to live, or stay any while,” he went on.  “I might go some time for a little visit. . . .  But never to live.”

“Oh—­Glenn!” she gasped, and her hands fluttered out to him.  The shock was driving home.  No amaze, no incredulity succeeded her reception of the fact.  It was a slow stab.  Carley felt the cold blanch of her skin.  “Then—­this is it—­the something I felt strange between us?”